Wolverine chews through metal cage at Newark Airport

Crying babies and seat-kickers aside, travelers at Newark Airport Tuesday narrowly missed a brush with a potentially much more disruptive companion: a wolverine.

Insert Hugh Jackman joke here.

The 40-pound animal, who goes by Kasper, was making the long journey from his home zoo in Norway to the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center, the New York Times reports, when he decided he'd had enough and chewed a hole in his metal cage.

When Kasper's handler, Sarah Howard, came to meet him in Newark, she noticed his head sticking out of the formerly enclosed cage, she told the Times.

Though he didn't escape, Kasper was growling, and had to be given a tranquilizer by a veterinarian before he would cooperate in moving to a new, secure cage supplied by the Bronx Zoo.

Wolverines are members of the weasel family, and are not exactly known to be friendly. They commonly feast on animals more than twice their size. Kasper's mood may brighten, however, when he gets to his new digs in Alaska-- the Times reports a female mate is on her way from Sweden.